Cairo (IINA) - An Egyptian court has sentenced ousted President Muhammad Mursi and more than 100 other defendants to death over jail breaks during the 2011 uprising, news agencies reported.
Among the others sentenced to death were Mohamed Badei, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who had already been handed the death penalty in another trial, and his deputy Khairat Al-Shater. Mursi and dozens of other leaders were then detained amid a crackdown that left hundreds of his supporters dead. Many of those sentenced on Saturday were tried in absentia, including renowned Islamic scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi.
Mursi, sitting in a caged dock in the blue uniform of convicts having already been sentenced to 20 years for inciting violence, raised his fists in defiance when the judge read out his verdict. Mursi had ruled for only a year before mass protests prompted the military to overthrow him in July 2013. The court will pronounce its final decision on June 2.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan criticized Egypt over the decision and accused the West of hypocrisy, according to the state-run Anatolian news agency. "While the West is abolishing the death penalty, they are just watching the continuation of death sentences in Egypt. They don't do anything about it," Erdogan was quoted as saying. Human rights group Amnesty International said the trial was a "charade" and based on "void procedures". "Condemning Mohamed Mursi to death after more grossly unfair trials shows a complete disregard for human rights...he was held for months incommunicado without judicial oversight and that he didn’t have a lawyer to represent him," the organization said in a statement.
Mursi, who was overthrown by the army in 2013 amid protests against his government, was spared the death sentence in the first of two trials that concluded on Thursday, in which the court advised death sentences for 16 defendants on espionage charges. They had been charged with colluding with foreign powers, the Palestinian group Hamas and Iran to destabilize Egypt.
Egyptian authorities have banned Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood since his overthrow and arrested thousands of his supporters. Last month, an Egypt court sentenced Mursi and 12 other defendants to 20 years in prison for ordering the arrest and torture of protesters in clashes outside the presidential palace in December 2012. The court acquitted the former president of murder charges that could have seen him face the death penalty
HA/IINA
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